The uncontrollable “megafires” that are taking place this summer in France, Spain or Portugal are favored by high summer temperatures and are more and more frequent. In Belgium, temperatures are also rising. So a question arises: are our forests in danger?
In the spring of 2011, 1399 hectares of the Hautes Fagnes and 800 hectares of the Campines went up in smoke. But these are not the only fragile areas of the country. Walloon Brabant is home to a pine forest of Scots pines, trees renowned for emitting “highly flammable volatile organic compounds” as well as a “Litter of pine cones and dead wood also very flammable”explains Alain Peeters, agro-ecologist for Living Earth.
And our forests are all the more fragile because they contain a lot of dead wood. If today the mega fires of southern Europe are spared us, in the future global warming might confront us with them.